On Monday Mr. Chamberlain addressed a still larger and more
enthusiastic meeting at Denbigh, and made a mach more temperate speech, in which be compared the line taken by the Lords on the Franchise Bill to the declaration of the owners of a place of entertainment who should say to the crowd outside, " You are, we admit, entitled to admission to the perform- ance; you have paid for your places ; you have as much right to be there as those who are now enjoying what is going on; but we have not made up our minds whether we will put you in the galleries or in the pit; and until we can do so,—and we shall not be in a hurry,—you must wait outside in the cold." He denied Sir Stafford Northcote's assertion that he himself cherished a deep spite against the House of Lords; but his denial was somewhat equivocal in its drift. "Why should I have any spite against the House of Lords ? I have always thought it a very picturesque institution, attractive from its connection with the history of our country. I have no desire to see a dull uni- formity of social life, and I am rather thankful than other- wise to gentlemen who will take the trouble of wearing robes and coronets, and who will keep up a certain state and splen- dour which it is very pleasing to look upon. They are ancient monuments, and I, for one, should be very sorry to deface them. But, gentlemen, I cannot admit that we can build upon these interesting ruins the foundations of our Govern- ment. I cannot allow that these antiquities should control the destinies of a free Empire." In other words, Mr. Chamber- lain would retain the Peers as he would retain Stonehenge under the protection of Sir John Lubbock's Ancient Monuments Preservation Act; but he would no more sacrifice the Franchise Bill to them, than he would renew the bloody Druidical rites at Stonehenge.
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